In a major fillip to the ambitious plans to put Indian drug control administration on par with global standards and ushering in e-governance to ensure transparency, the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) will hopefully be moving to the new state-of-the-art Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Bhavan by the middle of next month.

``The works are almost over there and facilities are being laid. We will start moving to the new place in phases soon and most probably, we will be able to work from the new office completely by the middle of May,'' DCGI Dr Surinder Singh told Pharmabiz.

As part of streamlining the working of the CDSCO, e-governance will be fully in place within next two years to put the Indian mechanism on par with that of US FDA and other developed nations. The new office would be made wi-fi and all records would be digitalised. The digitalisation of documents will start from this year itself. A senior officer from CDSCO has been posted to assess the progress of the work in the new building regularly, he said.

The new DCGI, as part of his dream plans to bring in better administration, had already taken inputs from the industry and others about the changes to be made and facilities to be set up. Already a leading information company has made a couple of presentations on the entire IT-solutions to be employed. The proposal in this regard is before the ministry and once approval is accorded, DCGI office would go for open tender to invite IT companies to take up the job.

Another major step being planned is to launch an interactive portal and give separate IDs to every registered drug firm so that they could track the progress of their applications and send feedback. There will be specific time frame for each kind of applications to be cleared and the detailed instructions on requirements put in the website, so that confusion and delay could be delayed.
``This will bring in transparency to the best and avoid chances for complaints. It will also bring in further accountability on my staff as it will be easy to fix the problem or find out the causes of undue delay,'' Dr Singh said. The DCGI also said that he would be meeting the liaison officers of pharma companies and others once a month to get their feedback and attend the complaints in person in the new building which has enough space for conference, besides better facilitation centre.

He also disclosed that the biggest hurdle on the way to e-governance is the training of the existing staff or the new staff as they would be handling a comprehensive and totally new solution. Hands-on training will be given to them and the system would be in place as soon as this task is complete.

The new building to house the CDSCO, built as part of the Rs 355-crore WB-funded capacity building project, was scheduled to be inaugurated in December 2006. It has facilities to accommodate the proposed Central Drug Authority of India.